My apologies.  When I logged in this a.m. I saw that I accidentally scheduled two prompts today.  I’m leaving them both up since poets have started responding.  😦  At any rate, if you want to participate – and I hope you do – please feel free to do so for both if so inclined.  Thank you! 

.

The days were as golden as the sunsets

when we played on the Jersey Shore,

sandy and fevered in the summer heat,

the sun fading our hair and swim suits,

the evenings finding us a motley bunch,

hungry, ready to ply some old tin forks

to my aunt’s mac and margarine.

.

After dinner we tossed our gritty bodies

into a claw-footed bathtub. Sand swirls

where once the tub was white and scoured.

We’d move on, impish, soap-scented and

clean from the bath to our cots and lay on

worn sheets. We were quick to transition to

a sound-proof sleep, comforted by breezes

lapping at the open windows, leaking

promises of more romp and wrestle days.

.

While the moon-lighted nights pondered and

kissed broken shells and unkempt seaweed,

a cold custard of salty-wet beach waited …

for us, the dawn and our small bare feet

in blithe dance to a rowdy morning swim.

.

But these were short stays. Sunday would

arrive, unwholesome and unwelcome, time

to pack our bags and our laundry, our aunt

and uncle – raw-edged nerve – and we kids,

our spirits subdued, our skin browner-hued.

.

© 2013, poem, Jamie Dedes; I have no photographs of the Jersey Shore. This one is of Seal Beach in Northern California

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

Well, this one is akin to the first composition assignment on returning to school after summer vacation:  Tell us about your most fondly remembered vacations.  Perhaps you enjoyed it because it involved family and childhood.  Perhaps it was a dream vacation come true. Or, maybe it was an unexpected adventure.  Or, perhaps your best vacation is the one you are planning now. Tell us about it in poetry or prose and, if you feel comfortable, share your work in the comments section below or leave a link to it.  Responses will be published here next Tuesday.

We continue with the current recommended read: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Left, right or center – American or not – it’s a must read.

LESSON SEVEN Be reflective if you must be armed. “If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you.  But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things.  Be ready to say no.” Prof. Snyder,  On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

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12 Comments

          1. Yes, later today I plan on reading as much as I can of the issue as I usually do. I really like to see what others are writing. But today the rarity of sun is out and we are going to take a drive to enjoy it. 🙂

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  2. there was a time [embolden the title!]

    when one bottle of wine
    seemed as if it was going to last forever;
    the one I’m thinking of (purchased
    one dinnertime in summer at 7/6d)
    occupied a space in my life
    a mile high and spanned the gap
    all the way to Tibet; as you drank a glass
    that dinnertime it seemed to refill itself
    from the dregs of love

    when one kiss would last
    as long as the Rachmaninov cello sonata
    whenever you put the record
    on the turntable and let the needle fall –
    obliterated in the so well-known cadences
    which I could have been whistling
    had my lips not been squashed against hers

    when a bicycle ride would construct a day
    down to the sea and back
    across the long valley and over the downs –
    magic ride often repeated –
    I fill it from these dregs of memory

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      1. Jamie – I’ve only just discovered this opportunity! Thanks! I really am so old-fashioned. WordPress is a Rolls Royce and I’ve just been polishing the rear mirror.

        By the way I got out of wage slavery in 1992 rather than 1999 though whatever the date it still seems either like yesterday or 50 million years ago!

        Onward!

        Colin

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  3. Hi Jamie, This is my response to today’s response:

    To Italy

    you never expected this
    we touch Florentine great black hog’s ringed cold snout
    a ritual au revoir

    taste best bitter coffee on the TGV
    see snowed peaks of lower Apennine mountains
    out of warm train windows

    enter massive
    Milan train Station
    nine days coach trip
    poke me in the side
    when coach pace nods me off

    stroll spiral down to medieval streets and a tilted horse race square

    walk Rome’s cobbles amphitheatre
    marvel at Vatican mosaics
    we thought paintings
    want to stroke cordoned vast
    marble muscles

    lilt up Venetian canals
    wonder why when renovating buildings at home
    builders don’t have picture tarpaulins
    of the building beneath

    you never expected this
    for my fortieth
    expected Wales or Scotland
    then I request you order
    a passport,
    and live nine days
    out of a suitcase

    and thank your late father
    our invisible companion
    who made this possible

    Paul Brookes

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    1. A wonderful poem/story/trip. How fortunate, Paul, that you were able to do this. See your poem here next Tuesday unless for some reason that doesn’t work for you.

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  4. Thanks Jamie for the prompt. Hope all is very well?

    Here is one response……

    . again, the small things.

    it is the little things that excite, even
    in the height of summer, low look
    for seeds, small flowers studded
    in hedgerows, dry stone walls here.

    our lane remains dusty, unmade, plans
    delayed a while to update. developers have
    bought the big house, a nice place for holidays
    and rabbits.

    the stone lion is gone, due to health
    and saftey, wobbly.

    there is a small pool, to look
    in for blessings , a reflection
    on the day .

    seeds
    for the future.

    sbm.

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Thank you!